Unfortunately CPMC management chose to continue their lies instead of dealing with their workers and giving us a good contact.

In case you missed their "open letter" to Sal Roselli in the paper. They claimed that they had offered to meet all of the union demands and Sal was keeping us out on strike because of some secret power play. Funny, I seem to remember my coworkers and I voting to go out on strike.

I seem to remember being fed up with having 18 patients on evening shift when Catholic Healthcare West caps their evening shift aides at 8 patients.

While everyone on the line respects Sal, workers don't go out on strike for over 50 days unless they have strong personal feelings about their working conditions, benefits and wages.

Who made us strike?

Sal didn't make us do it.

The Devil didn't make us do it.

Management and its commitment to giving the workers more work and less pay than our competitors brought us to the ballot box. We voted to strike.

There isn't some phantom union boss pulling the strings and CPMC knows it.

They treated us as if we were invisible before the strike and now they spend their money on an "Open Letter" to Sal as if the workers didn't exist.

Today on the picket line we passed around copies of the Chronicle ad and everyone was disgusted.

Their claim that they agree to staffing arbitration is a lie. Any department that has government rules would be exempt. So because RNs have a legal ration CNAs would still be stuck with 18 patients on evening shift perhaps more if someone called in sick.

Their education "offer" of $1,000 is a joke. That will not pay for private school and City College nursing slots are so rare that they are distributed by lottery. If there isn't an opening, what good is the money.

The Unions vision of a giant education fund is what we need. By combining all of the workers education money into a Superfund, they could create classes so the money could actually be used. It is about the economies of scale being used to make sure the soon to retire Baby Boomers have enough health care workers when they need them.

CPMC could have saved millions of dollars on Security, Replacement workers & advertising by just communicating with their workers.